


Hollowed Out, Filled With Blood

by ieatgrassalot



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Hurt No Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:01:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28019703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ieatgrassalot/pseuds/ieatgrassalot
Summary: Hanzo and Genji have a talk. It simultaneously goes well and doesn't go well.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	Hollowed Out, Filled With Blood

The frown on his face could not have grown any deeper - or at least he thought it couldn’t, until his brother starts talking again. Assuming is the better word for it, but the grating feeling of his brother’s voice on his ears brushes the pretty word from his mind like his brother is seemingly trying to force the calm from his head. He grits his teeth against his brother’s storm of words, talk of how he’s running again, how this is why he hasn’t improved, words clearly stemming from anger instead of the supposed ‘zen’ his brother had reached, but the words of an angry man were the same as a drunkard - poorly worded, but wholly from the heart.

He knew his brother still hated him. He called it, and somehow, he’s still disappointed.

“Why aren’t you listening to me, brother? What about what I say compels you to tune me out?” He asks, and the question feels both insulting and asinine. Hanzo had never once in his life turned his brother out - not when they were children, not when he was trying to focus on his studies, not when he was on the verge of sleep, and especially not when his sword was dug into the meat of his brother’s shoulder. The screaming, the begging, rings in his head as he turns, his lips curling back over his teeth.

“I am listening. And I do not ignore you, and I never have.” He replies, his voice low and gravelly in an effort to conceal his anger. He’s sure his expression is doing him no favors - unlike when he was a young man, when he had control over the rage thrashing inside of him. He curses his face for a lack of neutrality. “I will converse with you when you listen in return.”

Genji groans a short, angry sound, and he throws his hands into the air, eerily similar to the young man that Hanzo had struck down, and he has to remind himself that it’s the same person again. His name feels like it floats through two bodies, the one he knew and the one he simply cannot decipher, and it frustrated Hanzo to no end.

“That is what confuses me, Hanzo, you never respond. I have tried everything - I’ve tried to give you space, and you kept to yourself, and I’ve tried to push you, and you clam up like everyone in the room is Father.” Genji continues, pinching what would’ve been the bridge of his nose if the mask was not there. Hanzo grits his teeth, but keeps his mouth shut. “And I have tried to simply talk with you - I’m trying now, and still you refuse to speak of anything. Of yourself, of the past ten years, about why…”

The deafening silence that follows thereafter is tense, the air buzzing with the friction of what’s left unsaid, and Hanzo can feel the spirits inside of him curl and shudder against his skin. Why Hanzo had done what he did, why he’d murdered his brother, and Hanzo has to take a deep, slow breath before he lets his mouth open again.

“You have convinced yourself that our pains are the same.” He replies slowly, his tongue feeling far too large in his mouth, and the words heavy with a slew of implications. “They are not. They never have been. My rage is not the same as yours.” Hanzo’s words are clipped, his sentences short - wholly unlike who he was. He loathes his tongue for such follies

Genji finally goes silent, but the peace only lasts a few seconds. “You do not have the right to say that.” He replies, just as slowly as Hanzo, just as dangerous. “You do not know the man I was.”

The silence grows deeper as Hanzo’s jaw clenches, the tirade crawling up his throat only held back by the fact that he’s holding his breath so hard his lungs feel like they might be crushed under the weight of his diaphragm. He swallows thickly, fighting the words back as he takes another deep breath. Genji has pushed his buttons since they were born, but never to this magnitude. Never over something like this.

“I will speak plainly,” He starts, “as to save us both the conversation.” 

Genji stays blessedly quiet. It’s not a yes, not an okay, not a no - but Hanzo will take it.

He lets the breath he sucked in out in a deep sigh. “You do not know me. You do not know what the past ten years have looked like, and I do not know the same for you. I do not wish to, and I doubt I will ever tell you how I spent that time. Not in full.” He says carefully, trying to weave his words with as little harshness as possible. “But you speak to me as if you can dissect what is in my head simply because we grew up under the same roof. Because we are family, and because we both participated in our undoing.”

Genji continues to participate in his own silence, though his body has tensed as if he wants to reply. Hanzo forges forward, though his heart feels like a stone in his chest and his temples throb with concentration.

“That,” he finishes, “is why I do not respond.” 

His hands are shaking. You couldn’t see it with the naked eye, years of training staving off the shivering, but he can feel it - and he loathes them too. Genji is quiet only for another few seconds, his next words coming quietly.

“Would you rather I act as if I do not know your pains?” He asks.

The audacity his brother has to say that is so painfully in character for him - for how he used to be before Hanzo had killed that one - is almost enough to make Hanzo laugh if it weren’t for the rage inside of him suddenly cresting, battering the backs of his teeth to squeeze between his lips. His shaking hands curl into tight fists and the crescendo of his anger makes his head feel light, and suddenly the anger in his words feels wholly justified. He loves his brother. He truly does.

“You do not.” He hisses, sharp and curt, wholly unlike him - whoever that was. “It would not be an act, Genji, it would be the truth.” Hanzo feels mean, and his face twists to match, and it feels horribly good. “You were given freedom, a place to be when not inside the castle, and I was given the duty of covering for you. Your freedom was equal parts a prison for me, and you do not know what that was like. You never have - you have never understood how deeply I cared for your freedom.” He blurts, the confession tugging his heart to the pinched place between his collarbones. “You found yourself outside the castle while I hollowed myself inside, open to what the elders would expect out of a leader, and how was I rewarded?”

He continues, his anger coming to a head. “I was given the order to clip your wings. I tried reasoning with you. I tried speaking you into staying near, I tried to keep myself from the horrible inevitability that eventually came to pass because I loved you, brother, and I did not want you to die. I did not want to hurt you.” His throat starts to clamp up as his chest hitches, and he curses them. Genji tries to cut him off by saying his name, but it’s soft and Hanzo holds up a hand to quiet him. “I hollowed myself because I wanted to protect you, brother, I thought I would be enough to keep them satisfied - and as soon as I found that I wasn’t, I could not control my grief. I wore myself thin and empty for naught, and the most I’d felt since my numbness was when I drove my blade through you.”

He clicks his teeth shut with an audible clack at that confession. Wholly unplanned, wholly unlike him, and he takes a deep breath, averting his face from Genji’s gaze, still holding his hand up to keep him silent. 

“My childhood, brother, is an empty slate in my mind. I remember little of it. Except for you, and the scars it has left me with. I do not grieve for what I have lost.” He continues, standing from his seiza. “I am not angry, brother. I was emptied, and thusly filled with my first clear memory being your blood on my hands.” 

Hanzo turns on his heel from their sitting spot, the show of the sun dipping below the horizon somehow turning sour. His skin feels like a burlap sack, loose and ill-fitting trying to remember what pressed him to confess that his one clear memory from when he was young was murdering his only sibling, and it makes him feel sick. He swallows thickly as he starts to walk away, his body tense down to his fingertips. “Do not follow me. There is nothing you could say.”

There are no protests. No sounds of movement, not even the sound of either of them breathing, and Hanzo keeps walking.

Another fruitless conversation. More of their breaths waisted, and one less precious secret Hanzo is allowed to keep to himself.


End file.
